Child of Sorrow
by Flame Tigress
Summary: "I'm not like you, Bilbo." -- After Frodo has departed on the Quest, Bilbo recalls this conversation with Frodo in Rivendell and reflects in a poem on the misfortunes, and the courage despite, of his younger cousin. Caution: sap alert.


Disclaimer: The characters and story are J.R.R. Tolkien's; the script from which I took the dialogue in ~s (because I've seen the movie nine times and am too lazy to look up corresponding lines in the book) was written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens; and I have no original ideas whatsoever and so will rot in a cubicle writing fanfiction on my computer instead of living my dream of becoming an author who can actually make money from what she writes.  
  
Author's Note: Half movie-verse, half book-verse. Random idea I had looking for LotR-related things to do to keep me sane while waiting impatiently for the "Fellowship" Special Extended Edition DVD (eep!) and "The Two Towers" (double eep!) to come out. Written by Bilbo after Frodo and co. leave on the Quest of Mount Doom (cue ominous music). Sentence fragments. Sorry. Looking back on his conversation with Frodo, Bilbo reflects on his unfortunate young ward. Caution: sap alert.  
  
  
Child of Sorrow  
  
~ I miss the Shire. ~  
  
So far from home,  
My child of sorrow;  
How came you to be so far  
From the living haven of the green woods  
Glowing with golden sunlight  
Where you spent your boyhood days,  
Where you might take shelter from the storm  
Of your fears and misfortunes;  
From the sun-ripened fields where you ran  
When you knew joy?  
Do you yearn for them now,  
No-longer-child, who will never be to me  
Aught but my child of sorrow?  
  
  
~ I spent all my childhood pretending I was off somewhere else...~  
  
Did you weep too soon,  
Little solemn-eyed child;  
Did you mourn too young,  
Wounded too deeply,  
Cast the unhappy lot,  
Poor lonely child who came into my keeping?  
Alone, all alone did you feel  
In a world that had turned its back to you,  
With a god that had looked away?  
You learned again of laughter;  
You learned to smile, to dance;  
But did emptiness linger beneath your joy,  
A loneliness, though you were not alone,  
Behind eyes that seldom fully smiled?  
And does it linger still? Are you still alone  
Behind your eyes, no-longer-child,  
In whom I still see only  
That solemn-eyed orphan I knew?  
  
  
~...off with you, on one of your adventures. ~  
  
Did you yearn for more, far-gazing child,  
Who ever looked beyond the horizon,  
Just beyond what was in view,  
Half-hungry for the great "out there,"  
Half-clinging to what you'd loved?  
Cocooned in the warm shelter,  
Enwrapped in the bright sureness  
Of your own familiar places,  
Your mind traversed the winding paths  
Of the words on a page,  
And dreamed of the farther places they led;  
Did you ache to walk those paths  
With your own feet?  
As the little mountain stream  
Longs to join the Great River,  
Did you yearn to follow the tributaries  
Into the Great Road,  
Wanting so much that you hurt  
The wonders at its end?  
Were you never told, no-longer-child,  
Who looks so like the far-gazing child that was,  
That all the roads are bent,  
And lead you to nowhere but where you began?  
  
  
~ But my own adventure turned out to be quite different. ~  
  
Is your lot still unhappy,  
My child of sorrow;  
Have all the things you feared found you,  
So far from your sunny wooded shelter?  
Have you found that there is darkness  
Along the Road that beckoned to you?  
And does it seem that misfortune  
Still ever at your heels pursues you  
Who wept too soon,  
Child by fate abandoned?  
All alone do you feel still,  
Silently crying out, screaming behind the walls  
Of your solemn eyes,  
For again the lot of sorrow fell to you;  
Bearing all alone the weight  
Of a burden that is not, should not have been yours;  
Facing all alone, it seems,  
Fears that none but you can face?  
Can it be that to suffer is you part,  
No-longer-child, yet still so an orphan,  
Wounded child, unhealing child of sorrow?  
  
  
~ I'm not like you, Bilbo. ~  
  
Yes, how unlike me you are,  
Wise-hearted child;  
Unlike me in your unfailing courage,  
The selflessness that led you from your home,  
The inner strength that brought you this far.  
A reluctant wanderer you are, like I was,  
Yet you carry on for so much more;  
Faced with far greater peril,  
With all the world resting  
On your so-fragile shoulders,  
With all the world's pain reflected  
In your sad, solemn eyes,  
Still you walk upright, still shoulder the burden  
Though you do not know the way,  
No-longer-child, so lost, so far from home.  
Though you think to follow in my footsteps,  
Though "not like you, Bilbo" is a failing in your eyes,  
It is to be your own equal you should strive;  
It is I who will never be like you.  
And I am sorry, my child of sorrow.  
  
  
~ My dear boy. ~ 


End file.
